1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a mechanism for taking an article to be transferred out of a barrel shaped carrier, having a bottom, such as a bucket or the like, by inverting the carrier to automatically drop the article out of the inverted carrier by its own weight.
2. Statement of Related Art
Hitherto, as a means for taking an article out of a carrier in a conveyance apparatus comprising a plurality of barrel shaped carriers for receiving articles to be transferred, each of which having a bottom, such as a bucket or the like, and one or two endless chains connected to the carriers and arranged so as to travel along a loop track, it is known that the endless chain may be arranged so that the carriers connected to the chain travel along a loop track in a vertical plane to provide an upper portion in which the carriers progress in a normal posture and a lower portion in which the carriers return in an inverted posture to thereby let the articles in the carriers drop out of the carriers by their own weight at the lower portion of the endless chain.
Moreover, there are other well known arrangements for taking the article out of the carrier by use of an additional grasping device.
However, the conventional arrangements for dropping the article out of the carrier, so connected, is limited to the case where the carriers and articles travel along the loop track in the vertical plane and can not apply to a case of traveling in a horizontal plane.
Furthermore, the arrangement for taking the article out by use of the additional grasping device requires high cost of equipment and is expensive.